Page:Hornung - Irralies Bushranger.djvu/52

 create in her a wilful sympathy with the unorthodox and the ungodly; more probably, however, she was unaware of the growth in her heart of this particular weed of original wickedness.

Morning came, and with it a few minutes of fevered sleep; but the girl's dreams were worse than her waking imaginations; they had the added terror of vagueness; and she fled, rather than rose, from her bed. The outer veranda, whereon her room opened, was as still and private as her room itself. From it she saw the red Riverina dawn, across a sea of sand flecked with sage-green salt-bush; and the touch of the dawn upon her face and feet gave her new strength and a first surcease from her shameful suspicions.

And shameful was no word for them a little later, when cold water and clean sunshine had done their work, and the station day had begun with all its immemorial humdrum regularity. It was a Sunday, and the girl knew it by all the old, unmistakable signs.